Frank A. Walls

Frank A. Walls
Born	Frank Athen Walls (1967-10-12) October 12, 1967 Ocean City, Florida, U.S.
Convictions	First degree murder (3 counts) Burglary (2 counts) Kidnapping
Criminal penalty	Peterson: Death Alger: 25 years-to-life
Details
Victims	5 (2 convictions)
Span of crimes	1985–1987
Country	United States
State	Florida
Date apprehended	July 24, 1987
Imprisoned at	Union Correctional Institution, Raiford, Florida

Frank Athen Walls (born October 12, 1967) is an American serial killer who murdered five people in Okaloosa County, Florida from 1985 to 1987 during robberies or sexually-motivated attacks, starting at age 17. Tried and initially convicted for two of the murders, he was sentenced to death on one count and to a 25-year-to-life term for the other.

Years later, he was linked to a third murder via DNA and eventually confessed to the remaining two murders. He later pleaded guilty to avoid further prosecution.

Early life

Relatively little is known of Walls' early life. Born on October 12, 1967, in Ocean City, Florida, he is known to have started committing crimes at an early age, ranging from burglaries to peeping on young women and even abusing animals. At the time his crime spree began, he worked as a dishwasher at a restaurant called "Quincy's" and was roommates with a man named Thomas "Animal" Farnham. Farnham would later claim that he was wary of Walls, due to the fact that he often talked about morose topics such as raping and killing people.

Despite his criminal record and concerning behavior, he managed to date the stepdaughter of a man named Mark Riebe – years later, he would gain notoriety in his own way for being a self-confessed serial killer.

Murders

Walls committed his first murder on March 26, 1985, at the age of 17. On that date, he was on Okaloosa Island doing community service when he noticed 19-year-old junior college student Tommie Lou Whiddon sunbathing there. Brandishing a knife, he went up to her and slashed her throat, leaving her to bleed out. Walls then stole her car, which was found on the following day parked behind a random building. That same evening, Whiddon's body was found by a random person walking on the beach.

On September 16, 1986, he killed a second woman in Wright, 24-year-old Cynthia Sue Condra, by stabbing her 21 times and then leaving her body on the side of a road.

On May 20, 1987, Walls broke into a mobile home near Fort Walton Beach, occupied by 47-year-old Audrey Gygi, an employee at a local Kel-Tec. While it is unclear what exactly transpired, it is believed that Walls raped her and then left, but later changed his mind, deciding to come back and kill her. After encountering Gygi a second time, he stabbed her to death, stole a fan and a radio, and left the crime scene. Her nude body was found early in the morning after a co-worker reported her missing after she failed to show up at her workplace.

Alger–Peterson murder

In the early morning hours of July 22, Walls committed his most well-known and infamous murders. He broke into a mobile in Ocean City's Greenwood Mobile Home Park, at the time inhabitated by 20-year-old Eglin Air Force Base airman Edward K. Alger and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Ann Louise Peterson, and intentionally knocked over a fan to wake up the occupants.

When Alger and Peterson arrived to check what the noise was, Walls forced Peterson to tie up her boyfriend's hands and ankles, before he did the same to her. At some point, however, Alger loosened up the bindings and attacked Walls, but was knocked to the ground and had his throat cut. Still alive, Alger bit Walls on the hand, causing him to drop the knife. Undeterred by this, Walls then pulled out a gun and shot Alger three times in the head, killing him.

Walls then returned to Peterson, removed her gag and started assaulting her. At one point, he grabbed his gun and shot her in the head – the shot proved to be non-fatal, at which point Walls put a pillow over her face and shot again, killing her. He then stole $200, a worn leather wallet and an oscillating fan, and then left. The couple's bodies were found on July 23, after one of Alger's superiors noticed that he had had not arrived at work.

Arrest, investigation, and trials

The day after Alger and Peterson's bodies were discovered, Walls was arrested after his roommate tipped police off about his odd behavior. As a result, Walls was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of kidnapping, armed robbery, burglary, grand theft and possession of stolen property. An inspection of his trailer home led to the discovery of stolen items from the crime scene, and Walls himself later admitted responsibility for the murders.

While he was awaiting trial for the double murder, Okaloosa County Police Department created a special unit to re-examine recent unsolved murders in an attempt to link them to Walls, as they suspected that he had had previous victims. One case authorities paid special attention to was the Gygi murder, as a search of Walls' trailer led to the recovery of a fan similar to the one stolen from her mobile home and also had a single fingerprint, later identified to be hers.

Investigation

As they had the most evidence with the Alger–Peterson double murder, prosecutors requested that Walls be tried for only this crime. While he was detained at the Okaloosa County Jail in Crestview to await trial, a grand jury was organized at the Shalimar Courthouse Annex in Shalimar to decide whether there was enough evidence for an indictment.

On August 11, 1987, Walls was officially indicted on multiple charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. His judge was set to be G. Robert Barron, with Chief Assistant State Attorney Drew Pinkerton acting as prosecutor while Assistant Public Defender Earl D. Loveless would act as Walls' public defender. In the indictment, Pinkerton outlined a list of items recovered from the search of Walls' trailer, including ice picks; knives; a .22-caliber pistol; bullets; eight .22-caliber pistols; a holster; a box cutter; a rubber-handed hatchet; unspecified pornographic material; a wallet; a chainsaw; a pair of burnt boots; four telephones; three fans; two lawnmowers and 93 articles of clothing, including a pair of bloodied jeans.

Prior to the trial's beginning, Judge Barron ordered that Walls must provide any biological samples necessary to the prosecutors, as well as undergoing a forensic psychiatric exam. On August 12, Walls' roommate, 21-year-old John Early, was charged for his role in stealing an Oldsmobile from Rodon's Auto Sales with the help of Walls, the same vehicle the latter would use to drive to the victims' trailer. Early was also charged with an additional charge of burglary stemming from the burglarization of a home he had done with Walls in mid-July.

In March 1988, the trial was delayed at the prosecutors' request, after a report by psychiatrist Dr. James Larson suggested that Walls might be incompetent to stand trial. Larson's assessment led to a dispute with another witness, Dr. Theodore Marshall, who stated that while Walls suffered from a personality disorder, he was sane and exaggerating the severity of his mental deficiencies.

In the end, Judge Barron ruled that Walls was competent to stand trial and scheduled it for July 11. While considering arguments from both the prosecutors and the defense team, Barron included the testimony of Vickie Beck, a correctional officer at the Okaloosa County Jail. Beck claimed that she took notes during an interrogation with Walls and that he supposedly indicated to her that he was faking his mental illness. The testimony was considered controversial and Walls' public defender objected to it, claiming that Beck had not properly informed his client of his right to stay silent.

Trials

In July 1988, a 12-member jury was selected for Walls' trial, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty against him. The trial officially began on July 15 of that year.

After only six days, Walls was found guilty on two counts of first-degree murder. Walls was initially scheduled to be sentenced on August 18, but the verdict was delayed because Judge Barron fell ill. A week after that, on August 25, Walls was officially sentenced to death for the murder of Ann Peterson, and to life imprisonment with a chance of parole after 25 years for the murder of Edward Alger.

Shortly after his conviction, Walls and his attorneys requested a new trial, claiming there were some issues concerning his competency hearing. The Supreme Court of Florida eventually Walls' convictions and ordered a new trial, moving the venue to Marianna to avoid pre-trial publicity.

In July 1992, Walls was found unanimously guilty yet again, with Judge Barron reinstating his original sentences given at the first trial.

Aftermath

Link to other murders

Less than a year after his second trial, Walls was linked via DNA to the Gygi murder, much to the relief of her relatives, who said in interviews with the media that they knew he was guilty all along. In an attempt to avoid a second trial and another potential death sentence, Walls pleaded no contest to the Gygi murder and admitted responsibility for killing Whiddon and Condra, in exchange for avoiding trial for the former and not being prosecuted for the latter two.

About a month after this plea, sheriffs from neighboring Walton County announced that they were investigating Walls as a possible suspect in another murder. This was the murder of 35-year-old Lindsay Sams, a woman from Columbus, Mississippi who was found severely beaten at a condominium in Miramar Beach on October 5, 1986. Whilst she initially survived the attack, she was unable to provide any clue to her attacker and later succumbed to her injuries at a hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. When questioned, Walls categorically refused to answer any questions, claiming that he felt betrayed by police due to the publicity surrounding his confessions.

While he remained a long-time suspect in the case according to FDLE agent Dennis Haley, law enforcement attention later turned their attention to Mark Riebe, the stepfather of Walls' then-girlfriend, after he and his brother were convicted of a similar murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. Despite this, Riebe has never been prosecuted for the murder of Sams, which remains unsolved.

Appeals

In 2017, Walls submitted an appeal in which he argued that his death sentence should be overturned on the grounds that he has an IQ of 72, which would qualify him as borderline mentally-ill. This appeal was rejected in the following year, with Circuit Court Judge William Stone noting that Walls had taken multiple IQ tests in previous years and had scored around 100 IQ for most of them, leading Stone to believe that he intentionally underperformed so he can have a chance of having his sentence reduced on the grounds of intellectual disability.

In 2023, Walls filed an appeal for post-conviction relief on the grounds that his intellectual disability should be judged by the new laws implemented in the state since his conviction, but this was also denied and his death sentence was upheld.

Current status

As of March 2025, Walls remains on the state death row and is awaiting execution.

Walls' crimes left a lasting impact on Okaloosa County, with many residents claiming that he permanently scarred the community. Don Vinson, the Chief Investigator at the time when Walls was arrested, claimed that the killer's hometown of Ocean City remains especially affected by him. Vinson passed away in 2022.

See also

• List of death row inmates in the United States
• List of serial killers in the United States

External links

• Walls v. Florida (2007)
• FLDC Inmate Information